Info

“My theme is memory,” Charles Ryder
says at the outset of Book II in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (225). “These memories, which are my life—for
we possess nothing certainly except the past—were always with me.” Here the
protagonist asserts the importance of nostalgia to his narrative. Throughout
the book, he cherishes memories of former friends and lovers, and of the old
English aristocracy on the decline in the early twentieth century. He laments
this decline, viewing men of the rising middle class like Hooper as the
unknowing inheritors of Europe.

But the past Ryder adores is not
just known for its grand estates and the politics of marrying correctly; a
darker side of the old way comes out in the collective xenophobia of English
toward wealthy foreigners trying to enter into their society. As the England of
storied noblemen declines in fortune (as seen by the gradual descent of Brideshead
from castle to military barracks), the aristocratic class still hangs onto its
perceived English identity by isolating foreigners within their borders,
distinguishing themselves from outsiders by exposing their flaws and making it
impossible for them to join the ranks of high culture. Anthony Blanche’s and
Rex Mottram’s desperate attempts—and similar failures—to establish themselves in
upper-class English society make them central figures in a study of the difficulty
of assimilation in Brideshead Revisited.
Though on a surface level, their personalities are dissimilar (Anthony is a
lascivious degenerate and Rex is a brawny chump), and Anthony’s scenes come
primarily in the first half of the book while Waugh fleshes out Rex’s character
in the second, the two can be regarded as parallel figures.

Despite having a Southern European
ethnic background (he calls himself a “dago” during his last meeting with
Charles), like Guido and Felix in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, Anthony finds himself metaphorically “burdened with the
experience of the Wandering Jew,” a “nomad of no nationality” (46). Though
nearly as young as Charles and Sebastian, he has traveled the world throughout
his short life, the end result being that he has no speck on the world map to
call “home.” Waugh introduces him into the story at a party of Sebastian’s, set
early in their freshman year at Oxford.
The focus of the party shifts to “the ‘aesthete’ par excellence” when he enters, the narrator’s attention zooming in
on Anthony’s exotic presence and flamboyant manner of speaking. “From the
moment he arrived the newcomer took charge,” Charles writes:

talking
in a luxurious, self-taught stammer; teasing; caricaturing the guests at his
previous luncheon; telling lubricious anecdotes of Paris
and Berlin;
and doing more than entertain – transfiguring the party, shedding a vivid,
false light of eccentricity upon everyone so that the three prosaic Etonians
seemed suddenly to become creatures of his fantasy. (32)

Anthony, we see, is making great efforts to impress the
young gentlemen of the party. Established in this single paragraph is his habit
of poking fun at the expense of others not present in order to gain rapport
with his current audience (which, as we learn later from his criticisms of
Sebastian when speaking privately with Charles, he is just as likely to turn
around and insult that same crowd). Charles argues that Anthony’s stammer
(brought to the fore with his stuttering pronunciation of “preposterous” and
“footer” in his first line) is not a natural difficulty of speech but
“self-taught.” Once again, we note a device Anthony concocts to further
captivate his upper class audience, bringing attention to himself by speaking
in an affected manner on purpose.

His precious behavior does not end
there. As if his teasing and stammering weren’t enough, Anthony goes out of his
way to drop names of places he’s been, in this case the capitals of France and Germany. (Later, of course, he
namedrops people he has met, including Marcel Proust, Jean Cocteau, Ronald
Firbank—even Sebastian’s father and mistress in Italy.) The overall effect of
his presence is to “transfigure the party” with his eccentricity—also faked,
according to Charles. At the same time he enchants his audience, with Charles
admittedly “enjoying him voraciously” (33), they must chalk it up to fakeness,
in part because he is not English: “as foreign as a Martian.” They use a
double-edged sword against Anthony. As a response to his bids for acceptance in
the Oxford crowd, they damn him as a phony at the same time they enjoy his ability
to liven up a dull gathering of “prosaic Etonians”—harp on his exotic
foreignness at the same time they would say his demeanor is all fakery.

Thus is the tragedy of Anthony Blanche.
His status as foreigner produces a desire to fit in, but his devilish charm—fueled
by his wish to impress—perpetuates and amplifies the poor reputation from which
he suffers. Hated by the Boy Mulcaster crowd, who saw it fit to attempt to cast
him into an Oxford fountain; despised by Charles’s cousin, who denounced the
foreigner as one “there’s absolutely no excuse for” associating with (42);
discounted even by Sebastian, who “shouldn’t think a word” of Anthony’s is
truth (61). And though he seems cheery by the party’s end, pleased to have met
Charles, this writer reads his sobbing recital from the third section of T.S.
Eliot’s The Waste Land as genuine,
even if characteristically dramatic. Having “foresuffered all” in his life of
globetrotting that has left him jaded, Anthony identifies with Tiresias (33).
Though he has probably not “walked about the l-l-lowest of the dead” in a
literal sense, he does suffer from alienation and has seen and experienced
enough for several lifetimes—hence being “ageless as a lizard” (32). Anthony,
however amusing he may be at times, however hard he tries, can only be with members of the English elite class,
never of them.

The same statement rings true for
Rex Mottram, a Canadian emigrant and aspiring politician whose social position
“had an air of mystery, even of crime, about it” (184). Like Anthony, Rex’s
status as foreigner prevents him from seeming to have a legitimate past—along
with his status as “new money.” And like Anthony, Rex “exerted himself to make
an impression.” Having abandoned Canada following a failed affair,
Rex seeks acceptance in the higher echelons of English society, hoping that his
money and bold manner of speaking will impress. In short, his estrangement from
North America leaves him yearning the great
honor of becoming assimilated into another culture. Yet his brusque, graceless
demeanor sends off the impression of being a brutish colonial. Charle’s first
impressions of Rex continue:

He
was a handsome fellow with dark hair growing low on his forehead and heavy
black eyebrows . . . One quickly learned . . . that he was a lucky man with
money, a member of Parliament . . . that he played golf regularly with the
Prince of Wales . . . and was on easy terms with . . . anyone, it seemed, who
happened to be mentioned. Of the University he said: “No, I was never there. It
just means you start life three years behind the other fellow.” (111).

The opening physical
descriptions make Rex sound almost simian. Not only is his hair dense and dark,
but—like an ape’s fur—it also reaches to a spot on his forehead that would be
bare in most humans. The closing direct quote, in which he exposes himself as
somewhat of a Philistine, is almost as Neanderthal-esque, especially in the
presence of the well-bred, well-educated Flyte family. Rex openly admits to
caring nothing for a higher education, a sure marker of status in the English
society of the day. Instead, he cares only for money and status—and obtaining
them more quickly than those competing against him.

He
fails to recognize, however, that such a rush for wealth without proper
cultural refinement lowers his status in the eyes of Charles and the Flytes. Though
the acquaintances he claims are high-status in politics rather than the arts,
Rex’s insistence on being familiar with famous figures is also reminiscent of
Anthony’s name-dropping. His desire to acquire Julia as his wife is, therefore,
not meant as a gesture of mutual love but a method of marrying himself into the
status of British elite. In short, he wants to become assimilated in the
easiest way possible—without the trouble of proving his worth with actual
intelligence. Therein lies Rex’s obstacle, for “Foreigners,” as Charles writes,
“were tricky about money, odd in their ways, and a sure mark of failure in the English
girl who wed them” (182). It comes as little surprise that Julia’s mother and
siblings—as members of the aristocratic class for which Charles feels
nostalgic—highly disapprove of Julia’s Canadian lover.

The laughable jeweled tortoise Rex
gifts Julia and his foolhardy attempt to convert to Catholicism only compound
his grief—and the idiocy Charles and others perceive in him from the start. Because
he senses their doubts about his worth as a suitor, he makes himself look more
ridiculous than he would have. Indeed, even Cordelia, the youngest and most
naïve member of the family, can see right through Rex. She curses his
well-meaning gift (the diamond-encrusted tortoise) as “beastly” (166) and
derides Rex as a “glorious chump” for believing her lie about sacred monkeys in
the Vatican
(194). By taking increasingly desperate measures to seal matrimony, Rex
perpetuates a vicious cycle. Thus Rex’s tragedy mirrors Anthony’s: neither can
become English, and their dire efforts to impress their way to acceptance only
worsen the situation.

In the end, however, Anthony Blanche
and Rex Mottram are not beyond grace. In Waugh’s sweeping gesture at the
conclusion, the ancient knights’ flame is lit again in the Brideshead chapel
(351). Charles perceives in this fire a grace that eclipses his previous
obsession with nostalgia. The lit lamp upholds the sacred and washes away the
profane (as per Waugh’s subtitle). Although this gesture culminates on the last
page, focusing on Charles’s personal epiphany, Anthony and Rex should not be
forgotten. At the novel’s end, they remain forever absurd, yet in a sense, they
forge their own brand of redemption.

Anthony finds his place by
forfeiting his struggle to enter the English elite—ceasing futile attempts to
impress Oxford
boys into accepting him. In his last meeting with Charles, he comes to terms
with his negative image, freely calling himself a “degenerate old d-d-dago”
(272). Instead of despairing, however, he embraces the term. He feels “quite at
home” in the Blue Grotto Club, apparently a hangout for oddities, outsiders,
and “saucy boys” like himself, and he accepts his station in society.

Likewise, Rex settles down on the
fringe of English politics. All the war-mongering exclamations he and his
comrades shout in Brideshead and all his controversial statements that make
newspaper headlines work to his benefit once Europe
erupts into World War II. Despite failing in romance and in legitimately
entering aristocratic society, Rex succeeds in politics—at least for the
moment. True, Rex will not likely become assimilated into normal British
society, but he finds a home as a kind of circus figure in the furor of
wartime.

These two men—the novel’s primary
depictions of outsiders—who tried in vain to enter the elite class for so long,
finally drop their pretenses. Instead of working to gain acceptance from the
old fashioned English aristocrats who would not oblige them by default, they
secure places in society by accepting themselves.